


Heart to Heart

by jujubiest



Series: Barry Loves Harry [9]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Age Difference, Barrison2, Gen, Protective Joe West, barrison, father/son talks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 05:20:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6106180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe West confronts Barry and Harry about what he saw at Iris's ugly sweater party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart to Heart

**Author's Note:**

> It took me forever to get any inspiration for this, mostly because I have so much trouble writing Joe. I have issues with overprotective father figures, so I feel like I tend to write him either way worse or way less consequential than he is. But I think I finally got the right mix. Also, this is Joe trying REALLY HARD to be better about his tendency to micromanage his kids' lives for their own good, so. Bear with the man.

Joe doesn’t know who to approach first, or if he should say anything at all. He’s trying to do better about what Iris calls his “helicopter parent syndrome,” but this feels big, too big to ignore. And he knows Barry, well enough to know that as much as he _wants_ to be completely open and honest with his family about everything, he will keep a secret indefinitely if not pushed into disclosure. Especially if he doesn’t think he’ll get the reaction he’s hoping for. And the guilt will eat at him every second.

In the end it’s the thought of that, of his kid suffering in silence unnecessarily, isolating himself in the process, that prompts him to speak up.

He goes to Barry first, comes to see him in his lab during a rare slow shift. He chooses work over home deliberately; it’s somewhere Barry feels in his element, more than at home or at S.T.A.R. Labs. If the conversation doesn’t go well, he wants Barry to push back, make his case, really _talk_ to Joe about it…not retreat from him or worse, shrink in on himself like a kid getting chastised.

Joe is really, _really_ trying here.

“Hey Bear,” he greets. Barry looks up from a daunting stack of lab reports and smiles.

“Joe! Hey.” He sets the reports aside with an air of relief and stands up, stretching.

“Do you have a minute?” Joe normally wouldn’t bother Barry when he was doing his lab reports. It was hard enough to get him to sit down and work on them without distracting him once he finally did. But this was important.

“Sure,” Barry says, perching on the edge of his desk. “What’s up?”

“It’s…about…Harrison Wells.”

The change is small, but unmissable. Barry crosses his arms across his chest, a casual enough pose if you don’t know him that well. His expression closes off a little, eyes growing cautious.

“What about him?” His voice isn’t defensive. Not quite. But there’s an edge there. Joe sighs.

“I know. About you two.” He holds up a hand when Barry opens his mouth—to deny it, maybe? To start defending his decision? “I saw you together. In the kitchen, at Iris’s holiday party.”

Barry’s mouth snaps shut, his face turning a vibrant shade of pink. He refuses to meet Joe’s eyes. Everything about him is at odds with itself. His posture says _defensive._ His eyes say _ashamed._ But there’s a stubborn set to his jaw, an argument building in the tense set of his shoudlers.

“Barry,” Joe begins, as gently as possible. “I’m not judging you, here. I know I haven’t been the man’s biggest fan, but…I don’t think he’s a bad guy. I’m just worried about you, that’s all. I think we both know by now that it’s never good when we start keeping secrets.”

Barry’s shoulders relax. He looks up at Joe reluctantly, a small shimmer of hope in his eyes.

“You really don’t think he’s that bad?”

“I don’t. I think he might even be a _good_ guy…who’s been put in an impossible situation. I can’t honestly say I know _what_ I’d do if I were in his place. I’m not sure there’s anything I wouldn’t stoop to, if it were you or Iris on the line. And so far, he’s done nothing but try to help.”

A tentative little smile is spreading across Barry’s face. The knot of worry in Joe’s stomach loosens a bit. This might actually work.

“He has,” Barry says, as though surprised this thought would occur to Joe.

“There’s just…one thing,” Joe starts, deciding to just bite the bullet and get it over with. Barry’s face falls immediately, shutters slamming behind his eyes. Joe forges ahead anyway.

“I just want to make sure you’ve thought all this through,” he says hurriedly. “And it’s not about who he is, or who he looks like. It’s just…he’s a lot older than you, Bear. The guy’s gotta be my age, if not older.”

“I don’t—” Barry starts to protest, but Joe holds up a hand again.

“No, lemme finish. Right now, you’re both working toward the same thing and it seems like you have a lot in common. But he’s lived a whole life you haven’t lived yet, had experiences you haven’t had. He’s a father, Barry. Your lives…they’re very different. And don’t even get me started on the whole ‘from another universe’ thing.”

Barry’s mouth quirks at that.

“Yeah…kinda gives new meaning to the phrase ‘long-distance relationship,’ huh?”

“It does,” Joe chuckles, then sobers quickly. “I just want to make sure you’re thinking about this stuff. I’m not saying don’t have a relationship with him. From what I saw the other night, it’s too late for that advice anyway. I’m saying…proceed with caution. Look before you leap, Bear. Because I know you. Before you know it you’ll be head over heels and in it up to your eyeballs, with no way out.”

“Loving someone shouldn’t come with an escape plan,” Barry says, stubborn and earnest. Joe smiles sadly.

“I know it shouldn’t, kid. But sometimes it’s still a good idea to have one. I just…don’t want to see you get hurt. Thawne…I know what he meant to you. Not like Wells,” he adds quickly, because it’s true and because he can see the horror dawning on Barry’s face at the very thought. “Not anything like that…but he still meant a lot to you. And I know you never talk about it, but as much as it hurt to find out he was lying to you, I think it hurt you even more to lose him. To lose the person you thought he was.”

Barry doesn’t confirm or deny, but his eyes shine a little too bright with the sudden tears he refuses to let fall, and Joe knows he hit the nail right on the head.

“Just think it over,” Joe says softly. “That’s all I ask. That, and don’t feel like you have to hide anything from me. I would always rather know the truth. I would always rather you feel like you can come to me if things go wrong than have to hide everything away and pretend it’s alright when it’s not.”

Barry nods, lips pressed tight. Joe pulls him into a quick, one-armed hug.

“I’m always here if you need me, Bear.”

“I know,” Barry says hoarsely, returning the hug. “I know, Joe. Thanks.”

That’s one down, one to go.

He approaches Harrison Wells at S.T.A.R. Labs, not out of any carefully-considered strategy designed to put the man at ease, but because he doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter. Except for the few nights Harrison spends in Joe’s guest room—and he now has a sneaking suspicion that he doesn’t spend them alone—he rarely leaves the lab unless coaxed out by Barry. Joe knows, now that he’s started paying attention, that they run off together some nights. Well, Barry runs, and takes Wells with him, to god knows where.

Wells is in one of the smaller rooms off the Cortex, writing some complicated-looking math on a board with a white marker. He looks tired and drawn, his hair more disheveled than usual. Oddly, that eases Joe’s mind a little.

He knows this isn’t the same man who hurt Barry so much last year. He knows it, intellectually, but that’s very different from feeling it. They share a face, a voice, a name…and Joe can’t help but react to that first whenever they meet, fight-or-flight response kicking into gear, hand hovering near his gun.

It helps to note the differences. The way this Wells is tall and lanky, and restless to the point that it borders on awkward, whereas the other one always looked so contained and self-possessed, somehow managing to give of an indefinable grace even while seemingly confined to his chair. They both have presence, but the other’s was sharper, colder. A mountain looming. This was more like a thundercloud building overhead.

His face is thinner than the other’s had been, too, the lines in it etched deeper. He looks ten years older, world-weary, and sad. The other Wells never looked sad. More like smug.

“Did you need something?” Wells speaks without turning. Joe forces himself to relax, drop both hands to his sides, not ready to reach for anything. He can do this.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he says, forcing his voice into something calm, non-confrontational. “About Barry.”

He sees the way Wells freezes. Then he turns slowly to face Joe, his expression a mask.

“What about him,” he almost snaps. It’s the same defensiveness Joe saw in Barry, but not nearly as well-concealed. The similarity almost surprises a smile out of him.

“I know about you two,” he says simply. “I saw you together at Christmas.”

“Oh.” He turns back around abruptly, focusing his attention on his equations once more.

Joe is not a man who’s accustomed to being given the brush-off. He takes a deep, calming breath. Counts to ten. Tries again.

“We need to talk about this.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Wells says, back firmly to him still. His marker moves restlessly across the board without stopping, creating a hectic scrawl of numbers and characters that make so little sense Joe strongly suspects they don’t so much mean anything as give Wells a way of maintaining some distance from this conversation.

 

“You’re here,” he says, “to tell me to stay away from Barry. Then I’ll tell you I won’t do that, and you’ll make some banal threat.” He puts down the marker and turns around, finally.

 

“I’ll save us both the trouble, Detective West: I’m not going anywhere.”

“Well,” Joe says, an ugly note creeping into his voice in spite of himself. “Since you know so much about the future, tell me this: what’s gonna happen to Barry when you find your daughter and go back to your Earth?”

Wells’s carefully blank veneer finally cracks, and Joe gets the briefest glimpse of a man in a state of perpetual anguish. Unsurprising, given the state of his life. Unsettling, nonetheless.

“I—” he tries, stops. Starts over. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.” He has the good grace to sound ashamed of himself, at least.

“Yeah, well…neither has Barry. He’s getting in this thing with you without considering all the consequences. Barry’s a smart kid, in a lotta ways…too damn smart for me to follow sometimes, but he’s stupid when it comes to the people he loves. And for whatever reason, that now includes you.”

More cracks in the mask, and Joe sees surprise. Then fear.

“I never meant for this to happen,” Wells says quietly, sounding helpless. “Any of it. I just wanted to get my daughter back. I needed his help. I wasn’t expecting…”

Of course he wasn’t. Few people were ever expecting Barry. Joe feels a twinge of sympathy for the man, in spite of himself.

“Look,” he sighs. “Believe it or not, I didn’t come here to tell you to stay away from Barry. Much as I hate to admit it, both my kids are well past the age where I can tell them who not to date. And anyway…you seem to make him happy.”

“Then…what did you come here to say?” Wells says, sounding surprised.

“I just…Barry’s had a number done on him a few times in his life now. I’ve seen that kid’s heart break more times than I care to count. And every time, I worry it’s going to change him, make him close himself off. But it never has…not until this last time. He started doubting himself, his friends…everyone. He stopped looking for the best in people, and started looking for the catch.”

Wells looks tense, angry, the way he always does when people talk about his counterpart’s imposter.

“I know you’re not him,” he says. “In all the ways that matter, you couldn’t be more different. But that doesn’t automatically make you good for Barry, or guarantee that you won’t find your own way to hurt him.”

“I don’t want to hurt him,” Wells says, terse but with a faint note of pleading underneath.

“Good. I just want to make sure you understand. Barry trusts you. He’s put the kind of trust in you I was beginning to wonder if he was still capable of, after what Eobard Thawne did to him. Try to deserve it.”

Wells blinks at him once, and then gives him a curt nod.

“I will.” He states it like a fact, rather than a promise. Joe returns his nod.

“Well, okay then. I guess we don’t have anything else to talk about. I’ll let you get back to work.”

He turns to go.

“Detective West.” Joe stops, turns back. Wells’s lips are pursed, his hands fidgeting, twisting the lid on the marker around and around. Joe has watched the man crouch for hours in the dark, gun at the ready, waiting for a chance to fight a monster. He didn’t look the least bit nervous or uncomfortable then.

He does now.

“I…thank you. For coming to talk to me about this.”

It’s an odd thing to thank someone for, but Joe thinks he understands. He nods again.

“No problem,” he says. Then he turns and leaves, hands shoved in his pockets, feeling strangely both lighter and heavier than before he arrived.

He’s said his piece. It’s out of his hands. All he can do now is hope Wells won’t disappoint them all.

At least now Barry knows he can come to him. That’s the important thing: that no matter what happens, good or bad, Barry doesn’t have to go through it thinking he’s alone.

Joe wills himself to believe that’s good enough.


End file.
